Never-ever step upon a snake.

Tuesday, 13th July. Semliki Time: 08:34pm

Today was quite a slog. Woke up several times in the night with various nightmares – I blame the malaria meds – and got up thismorning feeling groggy, despite the fact that we were leaving a whole hour later than normal. The usual trek through the jungle ended with the chimps prints vanishing at the intersection that led to the steep slopes or the open savanna. I felt less than disposed to risking my life on the slopes yet again and managed to convince the others that the savannah path was certainly the one to go for. This proved equally challenging, in its own way.

There are no proper trails in the brush land and we had to make our own way through the long grass. With each step, your foot disappeared into a world of biting ant, grass cuts and potential snake dangers (more on those later). The sun beat down overhead and dreanched us in sweat. As we wound uphill and downhill through dense grass and occasional dense thorny shrubland, I felt myself becoming progressively more drained and by the end of the day I was completely shattered. Its amazing how much more tiring it is to walk in the sun.

Today I almost trod on a snake which was curled up, sunning itself. I jumped back and, after regaining my composure, we all gathered round at a respectful difference to take a look. I pulled out the camera and started taking photos, an activity which riled our newfound friend considerably. It began to raise itself off the ground and do a waggling, hissing dance. This made for better photos, but was somewhat chilling. Eventually, deciding that it was probably outmatched, it scuttled of uphill and left us to our own devices. I’ve no idea what species it was, but it looked pretty deadly.

The cloud cover in the latter part of the day and the brief rainstorm has left my computer without much in the way of batteries so I’ll sign off now and call it a night. The isolation of semliki is starting to get to me and I don’t quite know how I’m going to manage ten whole weeks. Six am start again tomorrow. Wish me luck.